you said, blessed are the polytonal, the unafraid of a possible truth,

your little grin at my violent nightmares unnerving but lovely.

Love me, love my umbrella⎯how you relished your Giacomo Joyce⎯

gathered hundreds of exotic paper cocktail favors, left them

in odd places, fractal patterns, slipped between the piano keys

mapping a troubled Webern chord, a courteous warning

when overtaken by perilous desires, or puzzled out a surreal

phrase of Satie gaiety when your skin had a happy day.

I open one of your tiny crêpe umbrellas under the night sky, Venus

kissing crescent moon it seems, and dance the sad clown

lamenting our Fred & Ginger of the studio⎯smooth as polished

ebony, silk underthings, wild for Ornette Coleman’s Song X.

Who against the blind stream have made

your escape from the eternal prison?

Prettiest pauses her recitativo, I love Dante

despite the vulgarity of his dialect—deadpan.

Cats are reliable—St. Petersburg to Mendocino—

they know me and the vulgarity of Dante’s dialect.

All the way down in my battle with the tangled clouds

I made peace with the vulgarity of Dante’s dialect.

Heart-soothing eyes lift⎯Che siete voi checontro

al cieco fiume fuggita avete la pregione eternna?

The wine-dark sea, far lone sail, white pelican⎯

Katya smiles at the vulgarity of Dante’s dialect.

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BIO

Richard Jarrette is author of Beso the Donkey (MSU Press, 2010), Gold Medal Poetry Midwest Independent Publishers Association 2011, and it has been translated into Chinese by Yun Wang; A Hundred Million Years of Nectar Dances (Green Writers Press, 2015); The Pond (Green Writers Press, Fall 2017); The Beatitudes of Ekaterina (Green Writers Press, Fall 2017). He is also editor of Dreaming of Fallen Blossoms, The Tune Poems of Su Dong Po, Yun Wang Translator (White Pine Press, 2018) and Poetry Columnist, VOICES of Santa Barbara Magazine. He lives on the Central Coast of California and is also considered a regional writer of the Western North Carolina Blue Ridge Mountains due to formative years there.